The concept of Downloadable Content (DLC) is one that has been holty debated for as long as it has been around. It seems like there is always some new DLC that has people up in arms, and it only gets worse as time passes. Recently there has been a big hubub about the Day 1 DLC attached to Mass Effect 3, and to a lesser extent, the on-disc DLC included in Street Fighter x Tekken. Me personally, I've always been a guy that was on the outside looking in when it comes to DLC. Where Final Fantasy comes into this topic however, is that XIII-2 has thrust me right into the middle of the DLC world, and now I feel like I'm traversing a minefield. I'm not going to lie, this post is largely going to be a rant about Final Fantasy XIII-2, but almost everything I say is very much applicable to a variety of other games as well. While my experiences may be very focused, I feel that there is an important comment on the video game industry that can be taken away from what follows.
If you follow me on Youtube, you may recall that almost 2 months ago I made a video stating that I would soon be starting a college course on Video Game Development and Design. Well, I am current sitting on the other end of the first four weeks of the course. Said four weeks were dedicated to learning the basics of programming, and in specific, using flash and Actionscript 3.0. Not particularly advanced stuff by any means, but flash has the awesome benefit of being a medium that is very simple to share. So I thought I would.
For countless years now, it's become the norm among RPGs (in particular JRPGs) that there be some form of post-game content. Sometimes it isn't actually something that occurs after the credits but it's something that is harder than beating the game, and so its usually done after the credits roll. We're talking massive side quests, bonus dungeons and super bosses (or some combination therein), all of which have more or less become an expected part of the genre. Every Final Fantasy game released in the past 15 years has had a post-game in some form or another, and in fact, they have even gone back and added bonus dungeons to pretty much every prior Final Fantasy title via re-releases as well. So with all this in mind, having beaten Final Fantasy XIII-2 and dipped my toe into the "post-game", I thought I would give some initial thoughts. After the break.
Hello Internet, this is Rambling Josh, and I have some words to make at you. Or more accurately, I had a thought that I really wanted to put into words. Specifically this thought pertains to Square-Enix's latest venture, Final Fantasy XIII-2. On the whole, the original game (Final Fantasy XIII) was not particularly well received. Even those who did like it couldn't pretend that there weren't glaring issues with the game, one of the primary being that it was overly linear, and more importantly, the world felt empty. Final Fantasy XIII-2 set out to fix what the original had done wrong in a major way, and as such the world is full of people to talk to and winding paths to explore. However after a couple days of playing the game (about 10 hours) it seems to me that the world doesn't feel any more alive despite their best efforts. Read on to decipher my cryptic meanings!
What's up internet. For the past week and then some I've been playing Bioware's MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Yesterday I hit the max level of 50, and so I want to take some time to put together my thoughts on what I have experienced so far. The first topic that I want to talk a bit about is the game's space combat. At the end of the second world, at around level 18, you will obtain your own person ship. Using this ship you can go on space missions with varying objectives, and completing said missions awards you with experience, as well as fleet commendations. You also get daily quests to complete space missions, the problem is, is this enough to make the player keep blasting down their opponent's fleets? Read on to find out!
